


Found

by wneleh



Category: Edge of Tomorrow (2014)
Genre: Gen, Post-Movie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 11:34:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2810663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wneleh/pseuds/wneleh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some major’s standing, smiling, hat in hand, looking at her like it’s Christmas and he’s sporting a bow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Found

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lizardbeth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lizardbeth/gifts).



They say the war is over. 

That overnight a single bomb on Rue de Rivoli has killed all Mimics, left their husks to rot in Europe’s fields.

The barracks have erupted; soldiers sing, and dance, and weep. But Rita…

Just wants to call her mother. Or someone Hendricks cared about, to tell them how he lived, and died, and lived, and died again.

She wants… to know what happened, last night under the Louvre. 

Instead, she goes to work.

And now some asshole major’s standing, smiling, hat in hand, looking at her like it’s Christmas and he’s sporting a bow. 

Which is less crass than usual, Rita has to allow.

It doesn’t matter. 

“Is something on my face, sir?”

“No, sergeant, you’re okay. Can I buy you a coffee?”

She stares at him, as cold as she can manage. “No thank you, sir.”

“The war’s over, you know. Within a week we’ll be civilians.”

“Can you fathom how many ways that I could kill you, sir?” 

His smile is still in place. Like smiling’s what he does. “Yes, Rita, I do,” he says. At that, he turns and leaves.

\- - - - -

Later she hunts down Carter and drags him to his lab. They sit in restless silence, his lab door closed; Rita can’t bear to hear - joy. Damn, she can’t bear joy. So what does that make her?

Carter’s fighting a losing war to keep his manner flat. He really is a bit odd, Rita thinks. An outlier, her only friend; well, one could do much worse. 

“Can I say it?” he asks at last. “I don’t you want to freak.”

“I never ‘freak’,” she snaps.

“Have you looked in a mirror lately?” 

“I don’t have one.” Not since Verdun.

He stares at her like she’s the crazy one. Whatever. “Spit it out,” she says.

“I think…” he stops, “I think you did it. I think all this is you.”

“The victory.” She’s wondered, yes. “How could that possibly be? That violates all that we know about how time repeats.”

“We KNOW very little,” he says. “Just guesses, all they are.”

“But based on months – on years, perhaps – of steady work. By you.” She’s never tried to tally up how much lost time she lived. Some loops lasted mere minutes, others many days.

They just ended the same.

\- - - - -

The major’s on TV that night, to push permitting the US to run the French cleanup. She’s seen him many times before; she just hadn’t recognized him, yesterday, when face to face. 

There was (and is) a difference, some change between broadcasts. And not caused by relief, she thinks; at least not completely.

\- - - - - -

The major’s back the next day, bearing food and drinks for three.

“Millions. Of. Ways,” she says. “I could kill you. Truly, millions.”

“Dozens. But usually it was a bullet to the head.”

She looks at him – really LOOKS – and says, “The third cup’s for Dr. Carter?”

\- - - - - - -

They let Major Cage – that’s the man’s name - talk. About how he’d gained her trust, over and over. His failures, and the revelations that they’d made together. 

Still, there are some things he does not stay. “Did we ever die before you?” she asks, curious idiot that she is.

Cage stands too fast and excuses himself; it’s ten long minutes before he’s back, hair slicked back, face ashen. 

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t know that that was going to happen. I’m – still not really a soldier.”

Rita wonders what he thinks a soldier is.

“Why are you here?” she asks. “Don’t take offense, but – we don’t know you at all.”

Cage sighs and rakes a shaking hand through now-imperfect hair. 

“I know,” he says. 

\- - - - - -

After Cage leaves, Carter opens up his laptop and starts to snoop. “Quite the prettyboy,” he says. “I think he’ll have a harder time of it than you.”

“Combat is hardly a unique experience,” she snaps. 

Carter shakes his head and continues clicking.

\- - - - - -

Rita packs her bags that afternoon and requests some leave, immediately granted. Her mother is delighted when she walks into the kitchen; this lasts the length of time it takes to steep a pot of tea. “You have changed so much,” she says. “You never smile now.”

It’s not her job to smile. Not like Major Cage.

Her Grandpa shakes his head and says, in Polish barely understood, that it’s a sin that they would send women like her to war. 

She’s told him many times before how armor heightens female strengths and compensates for weaknesses, to make those with grit to fight more deadlier than men. It’s not an argument she’s ever going to win.

At least they’ve lived to have it.

\- - - - - -

Her mother sets to work; somehow she finds herself at mass. She’d hoped for anonymity, but word has gotten out wide that “Angel of Verdun” is come, and the small church is packed.

When she was young, the church had been a place of rest and peace; then, early in the war, it’d offered hope and fellowship; later, she had eschewed worship, because where had God been then? 

Once the “Angel of Verdun” had been offered as a savior - she hadn’t dared.

Now she tries to smile and lets herself be photographed. And wishes she’d used makeup for – whatever it is for. 

She wishes that she’d stayed on base. But she’d had to come home.

\- - - - - -

Major Cage is on the TV set left blasting in the parlor. With perfect hair, and gleaming teeth, and a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes.

She waits until it’s very late, then pulls the card he’d given her, and calls. “How do you do it?” she asks straight off. “How is it you can smile?”

“I’m just doing my job,” he says. “It’s killing me.”

“That’s a new one,” she laughs, surprised. “Do you want to talk some more? About what you left out.”

“Like?”

“The whole story, from start to end. Why General Brigham hated you. How many ways you died. How many ways I died. If you tell me, then perhaps I’ll tell you things as well.”

There’s a long pause. “I was a different man – last week,” Cage says.

Her first response to Cage had been unqualified disdain. Why had that been?

“I can cut out first thing,” she says. “Come find me when you wake up.”

**Author's Note:**

> Lizardbeth wrote: _While I'm here for Rita in any and all things (with or without Cage or anybody else), from the tale of Verdun to fixit to whatever, I did wonder what it was like for her each iteration to realize that someone else is now going through what she went through. Obvs she handled it just fine, but privately that must have been quite a thing to know._
> 
> There are all sorts of ways I could have gone with this! But tackling Verdun was beyond me; and while there were plenty of holes in the loops to explore, they'd all be erased, and I didn't want to Donna Noble Rita even more!
> 
> Also, I usually walk away from movies like this doubtful that the characters have really learned anything, and my first impulse fic-wise is to explore this. Why was Cage a coward going in? Does what this sprang from remain in him at the end? IOW, I really wanted to tell Cage's story, not-so-much Rita's. Then I rewatched the movie, and noticed Rita's expression rarely changed...
> 
> I hope what came together is a decent compromise!


End file.
